ioticus said:
By the way, what kind of bugs would you guys consider major? Does it have to reformat your hard drive or crash your computer?

Those are good examples.
My definition of a major bug is a "game breaking" bug, such as not being able to move your pretender if you choose nation X, or militia costing -3000 gold (thus giving you 3000 gold per purchase plus 200 gold each day!).

Ah, I see. I don't consider major bugs as necessarily game breaking. I would call those critical or "game-breaking" bugs. But this is semantics. My main point is that I don't consider the above bugs to be "minor" or unimportant. For me, a minor bug would be graphics glitches that don't really affect game play or, for example, a spell giving a +3 modifier instead of a +1. Major bugs for me are features that are broken or don't work at all like the 2 spells mentioned.

I think the fact that this thread shows 69 pages of posts also takes care of the other comment also. Obviously the devs do fix the bugs.

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Gandalf Parker said:
I think the fact that this thread shows 69 pages of posts also takes care of the other comment also. Obviously the devs do fix the bugs.

Agreed. As a personal example, I asked Illwinter to fix the bug that allowed you to recruit while under siege, and they fixed it. Dominions 2 is an awesome game and the developers give awesome support, no question. I wish other developers like Creative Assembly were as supportive.

ioticus said:Also, I think these spells would be *very* useful if they worked right.

Hmm, maybe the fact that this bug went unnoticed for so long shows that the spells we not regarded as useful by many players? Of course, it could have been the other way around: players ignored the spells because of the bug, but I really doubt it if you look at this forum and see how neatly almost all parts of the game have been dissected by the players...

In any way, I tend to agree that non-functioning spells are certainly worse bugs than merely malfunctioning spells. However, long-term-unnoticed non-functioning spells might first of all be rather a balancing issue...

ioticus said:Also, I think these spells would be *very* useful if they worked right.

Hmm, maybe the fact that this bug went unnoticed for so long shows that the spells we not regarded as useful by many players? Of course, it could have been the other way around: players ignored the spells because of the bug, but I really doubt it if you look at this forum and see how neatly almost all parts of the game have been dissected by the players...

In any way, I tend to agree that non-functioning spells are certainly worse bugs than merely malfunctioning spells. However, long-term-unnoticed non-functioning spells might first of all be rather a balancing issue...

Or maybe the spells were broken in a later patch. The spells look very useful to me, since you're getting a 20 point defense bonus for each earth gem invested. That's pretty cheap, I think. It could make the difference of getting reinforcements to the castle in time or losing it to an attack. It's not just that though, I think it gives the defender a cool way of boosting his defense if he buys a low defense building like a watch tower. Especially for a high level earth mage, Arcane Masonry would be a nice spell since you can increase your defense by an additional 25 (beyond the 100 base) points per earth level above 3!

ioticus said:
I also just tested Iron Walls and it had no effect on wall strength both before and after the walls were damaged.

What were the parameters of your test?

Quote:

Also, I think these spells would be *very* useful if they worked right.

That's unlikely, since they are expensive both in gems and mage time compared to the fairly small benefit they give you. If they were low level, say around research level 3, took 5-10 gems, and only required an earth 1 or 2 mage, then they'd be powerful spells.

ioticus said:
I also just tested Iron Walls and it had no effect on wall strength both before and after the walls were damaged.

What were the parameters of your test?

Not sure what parameters you want, but I set up a test 2 player game and let an army siege a watch tower while an earth 3 mage cast Arcane Masonry inside the tower. I looked at the amount of defense remaining after repeatedly casting the spell and it never once increased the defense. I tested this both before and after the tower was breached. I tested the same way with a higher level earth mage casting Iron Walls, which also had no effect on tower defense.

Quote:

Also, I think these spells would be *very* useful if they worked right.

That's unlikely, since they are expensive both in gems and mage time compared to the fairly small benefit they give you. If they were low level, say around research level 3, took 5-10 gems, and only required an earth 1 or 2 mage, then they'd be powerful spells.

Perhaps so, but I think they are nice spell concepts that I hope to see return in useable form in Dominions 3 at least.

ioticus said:
Not sure what parameters you want, but I set up a test 2 player game and let an army siege a watch tower while an earth 3 mage cast Arcane Masonry inside the tower.

What I need is how many defenders and besiegers you had, what the strength on each unit is, and whether any of them flew or had siege bonuses.

I don't know since I didn't write it down. I don't see why it would be necessary though because I watched the defense value of the tower go down every turn despite casting the spell multiple times. Why would you need more info than that?

ioticus said:
I don't know since I didn't write it down. I don't see why it would be necessary though because I watched the defense value of the tower go down every turn despite casting the spell multiple times. Why would you need more info than that?

If we don't know how many troops and what their sieging strength is, then we can't be certain that the spells aren't working.